Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Today in the morning I read a story about a little boy who had passion for music but unfortunately his parents wanted him to be a civil engineer. The boy worked harder and harder but was unable to get through even the preliminary stage. Finally he ended up as a waiter in a hotel. I thought if he had been left free to follow his passion he might have been a brilliant music director. It was his parent who were responsible for his poor and miserable state. Suddenly it flashed in my mind to write about first step in the education of child.

Education, in the contemporary world of science and information technology, is a catch word that passes from tongue to tongue, pages to pages carrying diverse connotations covering various aspects of human life. Sometimes it refers to input of knowledge and information in human mind at others it proposes to process the acquired knowledge and information meaningfully and at yet others it emphasizes on the implementation of whatever is known to fulfil different purposes of life which need to be constructive and fruitful though many a times they tend to be destructive and harmful.

Thus all that education aims to achieve is making life meaningful, fruitful, peaceful and full of pleasures in all its aspects. This could be achieved through developing accuracy, precision, exactitude, smooth functioning in works and well-proportionate growth of human personality.

A human being’s worth is estimated in view of what he can do the best. His developed skills manifested in his works establish how worthy the person is. Nature has placed different potentials, talents, abilities and capacities in each human being. That is why their interests vary from person to person. It is not necessary that a physician’s son has the same interest as that of his father though the home environment does have its role to play to tone up the interest of a child. A human being definitely has tendency to adapt to what he constantly comes in contact with but it should not be overlooked that natural talents get quicker boost with little effort whilst forced interests consume much more time to groom.

Experts have stressed on the principle of fanning or watering. Each of these processes suggests that educator’s job is to provide incentive to bring out and develop the hidden talent and not to create a talent. A person trying to light up a coal needs to provide gradual fanning to make it ablaze. This is possible only when there is a spark in the coal. Same is with watering the plant that gives opportunity to the seeds to grow and bear fruit. Both fanning and watering must be proportionate to the needs of coal or seed respectively.Same rule applies to education viz; providing reasonable opportunities and adequate aids to develop the hidden talent and apparent interest of the learner. So the first step towards a child’s education is to identify his talent and field of interest through consultation with the professionals.